The use of wireless communication using short-range radio transmitter and/or receivers in industry is well established. One such standard for wireless transmission accepted for use in industry is the Bluetooth standard. To initialize radio communication between a first handheld device and a second device, in the presence of several such second devices, it is advantageous to select the desired second device with the minimum of time and effort.
A disadvantage of devices operating according to the Bluetooth standard is that a user has to know which Bluetooth service name to use in order to contact or configure the device, at least for a first time. A second disadvantage is the lengthy time necessary to establish a link to a new device even when the devices service name is known. For example, when a wireless manager application such as a Bluetooth Manager is used then the connection between devices must first be set up by the user before any interaction with the devices can be established. If a disconnection or a connection to another device is wanted then the user must open and start the Bluetooth Manager and carry out the required steps. Once the change has been completed the user can then turn his/her attention back to the maintenance, control or programming work or other task-in-hand. A first-time use of an application such as Bluetooth Manager requires many steps, perhaps as many as ten steps, to be repeated for each device that should be recognised for a first time. Subsequent contact with an already-recognised device also requires a plurality of steps or actions by a user to activate communication with the already-recognised device. In addition each recognised device is often recorded by such a wireless application manager as having more than one communication protocol, which may be organised as a number of protocols collected together in a separate profile for each detected device. It is difficult and time consuming for a user who is not specially trained in the wireless communication field to establish communication with one chosen device of many available devices in a rapid and efficient error-free way.